Guides · October 2026

How to keep a film and TV diary

A "watched" list tells you what you've seen. A diary tells you when, how often and how much you liked it. Here's how to keep one that lasts.

Log the watch, not the title

The single most useful habit: every time you watch something, it becomes its own entry with the date. Not a tick next to the title. That way rewatches count, your history reads like a timeline, and questions like "what did we watch on holiday last summer?" have an answer.

What to write down

• The date. Today by default, but fix it if you're catching up.
• A rating, if you want. A 1–10 scale gives you room to separate "good" from "great".
• A few words. Who you watched it with, where, or one line about why it stuck. Future you will thank you.

Films and series in one place

Most people watch both. Keeping episodes in the same diary as films gives you the full picture: which shows took over your autumn, and how your film watching changed when they did. Log episodes one at a time, or a whole season at once when you binge.

Catching up on the past

Don't try to reconstruct years of dates. Mark what you remember as "seen before" without a date. It counts as seen, but stays out of your dated statistics, so those stay honest.

Make it quick

A diary only works if logging takes seconds. Whatever you use, it should go: open, search, save. Anything slower and you'll stop by February.

What you get back

After a few months, the dates start paying off: how many films you watched this year, your busiest month, your longest streak, the directors and actors you keep coming back to, and the films you rewatch every year. Statistics like these are only worth anything if they come from what you actually logged, never from guesses.